Minnesota Wild head coach Mike Yeo, top, and players react as they look up a score board after Chicago Blackhawks’ Bryan Bickell scored his second goal during the third period in Game 1 of an NHL hockey second-round playoff series in Chicago, Friday, May 2, 2014. The Blackhawks won 5-2. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

He suggested that too many of his players were mentally and physically out to lunch during Game 1 against the Blackhawks. I was among a lot of folks who thought the Wild worked very hard in the opener. They simply got beat by a late burst of skill by Patrick Kane. So I wondered if some of his players would roll Yeo up in a blanket and dump him in Lake Michigan after getting wind of his postgame review.

“I know in here we feel pretty good about the way we played,” Wild left wing Zach Parise said. “I thought it was pretty even for the most part.”

Saturday, Yeo sort of backtracked.

“When I watched the game again and I watched it carefully, we played a good game last game,” Yeo said. “But we didn’t play a great game.”

That was a big change in attitude just 16 hours after pretty much calling out his team. But I think he got it right this time. I also think he knew this all along. The Wild went stride for stride with the Blackhawks until the closing minutes when Kane stepped up and won it.

“We got away with one,” said Chicago defenseman Johnny Oduya. “I think they outworked us. This is the bottom line. Hockey is very simple like that sometimes. You try to complicate things with systems and plays and a bunch of different things. We talked about it, too. The passion and the fire have got to be there. The urgency. I think they had a little bit more of that.”

So the question is why Yeo veered away from the Coaching 101 handbook. It says in there that coaches are supposed to downplay both victories and losses in order to keep everyone’s life on an even keel. At first, I thought he simply might have had an emotional outburst after the disappointment of losing.

“No, no, no. It wasn’t emotional at all,” Yeo insisted. “It was more like, ‘Let’s put this aside, but at the same time let’s not just say to ourselves that we played a good game and it could have gone our way. Let’s make sure next game we play a great game. And make it go our way.’ ”

And now we are starting to get to the truth. In Game 1 of last year’s series vs. Chicago — a series Yeo clearly has seared into his brain — the Wild played well and came up a bit short. Then they got hammered in Game 2.

In their opening-round series against Colorado, the Wild again got edged in a Game 1 that could have gone either way. And then they weren’t nearly as good in Game 2. In fact, Game 2 was their worst of the series. So Yeo is unleashing his best psychological moves to prevent a repeat.

“First off, I spoke to the team right after the game and kind of just said what I told you guys,” Yeo noted of the previous night. “I wasn’t mad at anybody. At the same time, we played a game in here last year, Game 1, and we said, ‘Oh that game could have went our way,’ and the next game we came out and we weren’t good enough.

“It’s not just about last year and Game 1. It’s also after Game 1 in the last series, too. We had a game where we did a lot of good things and we said, ‘OK, we did a lot of good things and this one just sort of got away from us.’ You can’t just expect and assume that things will be better the next game.”

So we can see that he is guarding against his players taking any type of solace in a losing effort. Still, he won’t win any friends by accusing his players of being unfocused and lacking effort when, in fact, most seemed to be giving it all they had. Many in the Chicago media were marveling at the Wild’s work ethic, even if the coach wasn’t.

“I think it’s a good thing we had some momentum there and we had some chances and we’ve just got to be sharper when we get those chances,” said Mikko Koivu. “We just have to be a little bit better.”

Yes, that’s the proper analysis.

“After the emotions of the Game 7 victory, I was actually kind of pleased with many guys, the battle, the urgency they were able to play with,” Yeo said.

Now he’s kind of happy? Look, we get it. Just because the game was close doesn’t mean the next one will be, too. We get it, but do the players? That was an awful lot of psychology being deployed there. My head is spinning.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in Sports

Nate Mason rolled down his sock and pulled up the cuff his compression pants to reveal a big bruise on his right shin during pregame warmups Wednesday at Williams Arena. The blue mark — from being tripped late in Monday’s loss to rival Wisconsin — was the latest hurdle of adversity heading into the senior guard’s final game at the...

FORT MYERS, Fla. — The final season of the franchise-record contract the Minnesota Twins gave Joe Mauer has begun, bringing with it the inevitable questions about his future. For now, before any such decisions must be made by the front office or the soon-to-be-35-year-old first baseman, Mauer has found himself in a reflective mood. He has started his 17th major...

There weren’t many positives to pull out of the Timberwolves’ home loss to Houston in the days leading up to the all-star break, the exception being the play of Minnesota’s starting point guard. Jeff Teague finished with 25 points, eight assists and five rebounds while taking 15 shots from the field. He was assertive but not selfish, a trademark of...

Safety Ken Handy-Holly has made a decision to leave the Gophers football team, a school spokesman said. The freshman from Jackson, Ala., had 12 tackles, a fumble recovery and a forced fumble in eight games last season. He had his redshirt removed after Antoine Winfield Jr., was injured in the Big Ten opener against Maryland on Sept. 30. Handy-Holly was rated...

Red Wing’s Taylor Heise had a high school hockey career for the books. The Gophers commit netted 67 goals this season and has more than 200 for her career. But she couldn’t get much of anything going in Wednesday’s Class A quarterfinal against Proctor/Hermantown, and neither could her teammates. The unseeded Mirage suffocated third-seeded Red Wing with physical play and...